Writing

I have a dilemma: When does a real life story become fictional, and does it matter? See, I’ve taken to writing semi-autobiographical stories when attempting to start writing real stories from my life. The thing is that there are different sides of the story, how it appeared on my mind and how it actually happened.

The answer, I suppose, would be if you’re trying to create a truthful representation of your life…well, truth really is relative…lets call it a “factual” representation of your life vs. an interesting read. Can there be a marriage between the two? And if so, is it still autobiographical? .

It’s not really a burning question, it’s just that after I let certain people read my stories they seemed to be really interested in what was real and what wasn’t. How factual do you feel you are in your writing? If it seems like I’m rambling it’s because I am. Sorry, I don’t seem to think too far ahead when writing.

Anywho, here’s one of those semi-autobiographical stories that I wrote. This one was actually posted on my journal:

Lobotomies

I wanted to be defiant. While the instructor gave us regurgitated facts on the cerebral hemispheres, which he called a “lesson”, I was secretly reading the ending of my book “Puerto Rican Meadows”. My opened biopsychology book provided a pleasant shield which protected my secret actions from view. The Puerto Rican protagonist had just given a heartbreaking audition to get in to the posh art school, which her family was too poor to afford. Had she impressed the judges she would get a full tuition scholarship. Had she not, she would return to her cockroach infested apartment with her only parent, in Queens, and lived the rest of her years in misery. It was a cliffhanger fit for a Movie of the Week on Lifetime. The story suddenly jolted years ahead, with the little Puerto Rican’s graduation with honors from that posh school. I felt like yelling “You Go Girl!” but people had already started to notice I was not paying attention to class when I gasped a little during a particular touching part of the book, which happened to coincide with the instructor mentioning lobotomies. The emotion was too much for me to bear, and the trapped words in my throat needed a way to get out. I held back as much as I could and then, without notice, tears started to crowd the corners of my eyes. Panicking I looked up to see if anyone was paying attention to me, and starring straight into my face was the instructor with a horrified look on his face as if saying “you…you’re not paying attention to me at all…you’re a farce Pedro Haro!”. I froze for a couple of seconds, tears streaming down my eyes, then instinctively screamed a girly “ouch!”. Everyone turned around. As I ran out of the room I said “I poked my eye.”

Comments

“Can there be a marriage between the two?”

There could be, but it would only be called a marriage in the same sense that a capital “B” is married to a capital “S,” when the two alphabets are used side-by-side to each other. The paramount issue of whether fiction should be exploited for an autobiography has already been resolved only weeks after Guttenberg, himself, started rolling the presses. This was facilitated by severing the personal choice--that of incorporating fiction--with any ties the decision had with the author’s conscious, since if they remained integral with each other, the moral dilemma that would obviously ensue, would be too big an obstacle to surmount. Such a self-inflicted handicap would be more disastrous than writer’s block on worldwide output, and consequently, dissemination of literature would lapse into hubris. Not withstanding, there is still what is referred to as integrity out there, but you really have to shop around. Coincidentally, any good newspaper man would advise: “print the legend before the fact.”

Pharoe:

The word [author‘s] “conscious” was used in place of [author‘s] “conscience.”

I might mention that with the preponderance of web journals (diaries) on the World Wide Web already causing a glut--in some cases, a situation that is analogous to the ecological condition we had at Lake Wilson--it behooves me why anyone would invest energy into writing another autobiography, when the genre is already saturated. Especially, if the author’s purpose is to eventually submit the finished manuscript to a publisher, expecting that his labor will bring him world wide acclaim and its fruition instant metamorphosis, albeit, in his mind alone. Besides sexual abstinence, it is the most unilateral deal anyone could make between himself and the world, and any sought after narcissism will be D.O.A. at the publisher’s office.

Autobiographies are not known to win sticks of dynamite at Stockholm for the prize of literature. The reason for this, I assume, is that the recordation of what you ate for breakfast, or adulthood memories of choosing the color of your underwear so that it matched the outfit of the superhero that we all imagine ourselves late at night to be, do not, in themselves, generate enough enthusiasm that people will actually buy your tomes, irregardless, of how much it drips with harlequin tears, or is souped up with personal victories, or is even drafted with inadvertent intermezzos that do not use the words I or me. Of course, autobiographies like the Jesica Lynch story, as well as, Susan McDougal’s (about her version of White Water) have made contributions in their own right, but these revolve around a famous incident that the subjects were caught up in, not wholly on themselves or on their own persona. I also don’t believe that a compilation of the individual, daily postings of a web journal will become a hit as an autobiography, since daily postings have a shelf life of a few days when another ephemeral post fills its slot, and it too soon gets replaced by a newer post before it too can get moldy, while whatsoever variety is to be found in a non-fiction novel, must be alloyed someway together in an overall theme, and if a composite, at least, not an aggregate. (yadda, yadda)

"Autobiographies are not known to win sticks of dynamite at Stockholm"

Perhaps not, but Bill Clinton is laughing all the way to the bank.

"the recordation of what you ate for breakfast"

Fine fodder for future historians who, I am sure, will be using the current craze for public diaries as valuable resource material, particularly because they record just such ephemeral information.

And even in my case, already, my six-years-plus "blog" will be the subject of a book to be published in France this fall.

So I think your view is somewhat pessimistic (even if I do myself read very, very few of the things).

"So I think your view is somewhat pessimistic....."

But Albert.....it works for me. By the way--just out of curiosity--you are not Hannibal the Cannibal in real life, are you? But even if you aren't invested with that specific moniker, let me add a few things, least I be misunderstood.

"Famous" people do not technically write their autobiographies. They hire ghost writers to do the manual stuff, and feel secure that their selection can embellish. Famous people do not submit their manuscripts to publishing houses. Publishers approach the famous people, with financial advances, and obligatory press releases. The reason readers buy their pulp is because they "are" famous. Not the other way around--they became famous after their recreational autobiographies reached the top of the New York Times best sellers list. The highest best selling autobiography by a famous person will never out sell the best selling book of all time. It will not even be on the record as the 2nd best selling book of all time--that slot is held by "My Diary" (the book with the blank pages).

It is indeed true--that eons from now--future historians will have a rich source of material to chronicle our age by, because of what we have left them through our unheralded weblogs and fearless webjournals. Mind you, some web sites will even be so encrustated with literary treasures that the historians who uncover them could only consider, themselves, tomb robbers. However, we can not juxtapose what will be then, with what is not now. Web diaries have done more to put vanity presses out of business than what the Spotted Owl did to the US forest industry. Nonetheless, weblogs are so ubiquitous, that I can not help but feel that the next great American novel, will not involve the life of a blogger, as much as blogging has impacted our modern lifestyles. So Pulitzers are not entirely out-of-reach for a blogger, since the Pulitzer Prize trustees are bound to eventually give recognition to the new online literature. The way I look at it, the autobiographing of daily experiences produces material as intermitently satisfying as the surf to the dawn patrol can be, but when its on, its as movable a feast in its own unique way.

"you are not Hannibal the Cannibal in real life, are you?"

Alas, not. Although I have been accused of cannibal-like instincts at times.

There is, of course, one glaring exception to what you say about diaries. Well, possibly several, but especially Anne Frank.

Pharoe wrote: "When does a real life story become fictional, and does it matter?"

You may have answered your own question, I don't think it does. Truth is stranger than fiction, but sometimes the truth does not engage it's intended audience like a good yarn. I would rather read a story with much of the basics of storytelling incorporated, i.e. character development, plot, intersecting secondary plot, central character(s), subtext, conflict, resolution, and all entirely fictional than to hear some inane but entirely truthful daily drivel. I think the issue might be not so much as did it happen or not, but rather are the characters and events believable and "truthful" enough to have happened. Find your voice, sometimes it takes me countless hours to express a single theme in proper english, but in pidgin the words flow faster than I can type them.

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